The Ghost Test
by ProneToInsanity
Summary: Recipe: One revenge-bent Dash, with one unsuspecting Danny. Mix in: a test to check how ghost-like you are, overbearing parents and a class full of unknowing minors. Add some friends, a couple of insane ghosts, and then shake thoroughly. Serve to taste.
1. I Really Hate Mondays

**A/N: Hello guys! This story is currently in the works, so it may take a while to post. Anyway, this is the first chapter; enjoy! :D**

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><p><span>Chapter One<span>

Sneering, Dash Baxter pushed Danny into a locker, fist held out threateningly to the smaller teens face. Other students at Casper High crowded around the two, cheering and cat-calling, quite happy for a fight.

_I hate Monday mornings_, thought Danny with a resigned sigh.

Unluckily, Dash caught the sigh. "What are you doing, _Fen-turd_? Waiting for your little girlfriend to come and save you?" He grinned wolfishly, looking too much like Wulf for Danny's liking. "Or are you bored of being beaten up?"

Dash wanted a reason to pulverise the little squirt more. If the dark haired boy replied, then that reason would have been fulfilled and the star footballer would have a very good reason to make yet another Danny shaped dent in the lockers. If he didn't reply, Dash would do it anyway. It was a win-win situation... for him at least.

Danny sent a slight twist of the lips up to the more popular boy. "Really, I'd just prefer it if you got this over and done with. I do have Lancer first thing, and he's not going to be happy if I'm late... again." The last word was muttered, but Dash caught it anyway, laughing in a feral manner.

"Excellent, _Fen-toenail_. I'll make sure that as well as a bruise, you'll have a detention as well." The thug raised his fist higher, about to slam it into Danny's face, when there was an abrupt-

"STOP!"

The shout somehow managed to go over the calls of the crowd and the teenagers scrambled, not ready to face the fearsome P.E teacher, Miss Tetslaff. She was at least six foot tall, with a masculine voice and a face to match that. On top of that, Tucker, Sam and Danny swore that every time Tetslaff ran, the earth shook slightly.

Basically, she was intimidating.

"Oi!" she shouted at Dash, who had run off with the other scared teenagers. "You come back here, Dash Baxter, or I'll call your father!"

Dash seemed to freeze mid-run, and then ran double the speed back to Tetslaff. "Sorry, Miss!" he squeaked.

Danny stood up and brushed himself off, checking his body over for any serious (for a human, at least) injuries. He hissed in pain when checking over his ribs; Skulker hadn't been very nice last night, even for him. But he knew the bones were healed; the bruising just had to go down.

"You alright?" Tetslaff asked Danny.

Danny looked at her and nodded. "Yeah, I'll be fine."

Tetslaff looked him over. "You sure?" she asked slightly venomously. "I could get him into trouble..." she implied.

Danny swore he saw a large bead of sweat run from the top of Dash's forehead down his neck.  
>He thought about it for another second, then shook his head. "I'm sure. He didn't do anything particularly bad... anyway, it's like this every morning for me."<p>

Tetslaff nodded to him, but then grinned at Dash. "You can go, Baxter, but I'll be keeping an eye on you..." she said menacingly. Dash hurried off to class, still quivering slightly.

"I'd like you to go to the nurse, just in case," said the scary woman. "Here's a late pass." She passed him one from her pocket, nodded to him, and then stomped back down the corridor, obviously looking for some new fresh meat to scare.

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><p>"And then," Danny snickered, relaying the story to his two best friends, "I swear I saw Dash shivering in fear as he ran away."<p>

Tucker froze, dropping his chicken drumstick with a clatter onto his plate as he stared at his friend. Sam was laughing quietly at Dash's expense, her ultra-recyclo-vegetarian meal on her plate as well.

"You're kidding?" Tucker asked Danny, who simply shook his head and guffawed in response.

All three burst out laughing, making the rest of the cafeteria stare at them. They were subject to this abuse daily, however, and quickly ignored the losers and got on with their lunch.

Wiping (admittedly, imaginary) tears from his eyes, Tucker switched on his loyal PDA. "I am totally putting this on the school website," he told his friends, quickly going into techno-geek mode.

Rolling their eyes in harmony, Sam and Danny ate the rest of their food before dragging a rapidly tapping Tucker out of the cafeteria and into the weak April sun.

It had been raining hard all night, and instead of flying, Danny had been forced to board the cramped and outrageously small school bus. He'd sat at the front, wishing the rain would get let up for ten minutes so he could zoom to school. However, this hadn't happened, and he'd been forced to go on the painfully long bus ride to school.

Sam and Danny chatted for a while, while Tucker continued being his big geeky self. The sun shone through the clouds and onto the slightly damp seats that surrounded the football field, where some of the A-List boys were discussing tactics for their next game. All in all, it was a pretty normal day.

And then, there was that wisp of cold air that came from Danny's mouth. Sam must have felt it, because stood up and let Danny pass so he could run down the bleacher and hurry behind them. With a flash of light, Danny Fenton disappeared and Danny Phantom was in his place.

Quickly becoming intangible, he flew through the bleachers and hovered high above the muddy earth, people quickly pointing him out.

"Hey, it's Phantom!" several jocks cried out, however Danny ignored them, instead looking around for the ghost. Quickly identifying Youngblood, the half ghost floated over to him and started to chat with the pirate child.

"Who's he talking to?" Dash asked Kwan, not seeing anything in the sky apart from Phantom.

"Beats me," the second jock replied, looking around searchingly himself.

Phantom nodded a couple of times, then sighed. "Fine," he said, his voice carrying, "I'll get you your cutlass back. But only on one condition." The half ghost then went on to talk to what looked like thin air, before shaking hands with the thin air. He zoomed off quickly, and was even faster forgotten.

As they say, out of sight, out of mind.

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><p>"You're late, Mr. Fenton," Mr. Lancer didn't even turn around from the whiteboard as Danny ran into the room, panting slightly. "I suppose that means you want a detention then?"<p>

"Uh, no thanks," Danny replied, hobbling over to his seat and falling into it. Bones had refused to come away from the pirate exhibit at the museum, so Danny had, quite literally, had to pull the bird away bone by bone before throwing them to Youngblood and praying to something that the bird wouldn't stalk him forever.

Because that'd just be uplifting.

However, Bones had managed to get in a good few pecks, making the teenage halfa bleed slightly. He had patched himself up, but darn, did that little bony beak kill his calves.

Sam quickly passed him his purple bag, and Danny opened it quickly, grabbing a pen and his English book. He scrawled down the date and title before copying down all the notes on the board.

**Where were you?** The note had come from Sam.

Glancing around, Danny wrote a reply, then passed it back to the girl he was sat next to.

"Why do you think Romeo believed Juliet was a Montague, even though he was at a Capulet ball? Miss. Sanchez?"

**So you were having to get Bones away from the pirate exhibit at the museum?** Sam had written in a response to what Danny had put.

_Yep._

**Harsh...**

_Believe me, I know._

"Please turn to page 38 and read read Act 1, Scene 3, starting from line 5 in your Romeo and Juliet playbooks, class."

Danny flicked open his worn textbook, then began to read the lines. Sam did the same, and behind them, they could hear Tucker doing the same.

_Oh, English._ Danny thought sarcastically. _My favourite lesson._

The period went by fast, thankfully, and the three friends trailed behind their far more popular classmates while leaving the classroom, chatting happily.

Then Danny's ghost sense went off.

There was a large crash! as Skulker flew through the ceiling and directly into the lockers, creating a large dent. He then cursed loudly and flew back outside via aforementioned ceiling.

"Well, that's normal," Tucker commented.

"At least he's not fighting me," Danny said, rather pleased with this turn of events. He knew that Dark Dan wasn't in the area, as every time his future-self was, he'd feel slightly odd... like his heart was twisting slightly in his chest.

Sam sighed. "You'd better go and find out what's going on. We wouldn't want to find out that Skulker, horrible as he is, is fighting Vlad or something."

"Fine," Danny scowled. Two brilliant white rings of light appeared at his waist and quickly zoomed up his torso and down his legs, making average Danny Fenton disappear and ghost boy Danny Phantom appear in his place. Jumping into the air, he shot out of the hole himself, his two friends quickly diverting the schoolkids that had arrived from the noise.

Quickly finding the source of Skulker's rage, Danny's eyes lay on... none other than the Box Ghost, who was currently throwing possessions out of cardboard boxes like... well, like they were cardboard boxes.

"Fear me!" the blue ghost said in his very annoying voice. "For I am the box ghost, master of all things cuboid!"

Skulker growled fearsomely. "Listen, pathetic being, if you don't stop annoying me right now, I swear I'll knock you and your stupid boxes out of the sky and you can watch them crash and burn!"

"Looks like you two are fine on your own," Danny muttered to himself, zooming down through the school and into a janitor's cupboard, where he quickly turned from Phantom to Fenton.

"Yeah, I really hate Mondays," Danny commented to himself as he walked to his final lesson of the day, Science.


	2. The Ghost Test

Chapter 2

"How did we manage to get Lancer - again?" Danny whisper-asked Tucker in their science lab.

"No idea," Tucker replied rather feebly. Lancer had just taken Tucker's PDA away from him (this one was named Hannah) and Tucker was currently going through major withdrawals.

"It's because your normal science teacher, Mrs. Denniss, is currently away on holiday," Lancer said loudly.

"For the rest of the _semester_?" Danny questioned, but was quickly silenced as Sam glared at him and pointed at what was written on the board.

**The Ghost Test**

**For the rest of this term, we will be questioning the supernatural while also conducting tests on members of this class to see how ghosts and humans differ in many different aspects of life and death.**

Danny gaped for a few seconds, then slumped on the table. They'd be doing about ghosts, and be doing tests, all while he was half ghost himself?

_Crap._

Lancer had obviously noticed Danny's reaction. "So, since you're obviously so enthusiastic about this topic, Mr. Fenton, we can start by testing on you!"

_Double crap._

"Uh, sir, is this even legal?" Sam asked, sticking her hand up a moment after the question was asked.

Lancer nodded, brandishing a bunch of reply notes from the desk dangerously. "I have your parents permission here, and because you chose this as an elective, I also have your permission.

"We won't be testing anything dangerous, just things like temperature, blood, sport ability and reaction to the world around you. Then, we'll be comparing these to a ghost that the Fenton's have caught for us."

"A ghost?" the word flew across the classroom like... well, like a ghost. Many people grinned, some looked scared, however three didn't react at all.

"What sorta ghost is it?" Dash asked loudly, earning a cheer from the other popular kids.

Lancer sagged a little. "Well, it's not Phantom or anyone exciting... It's just a small ghost..."

"Can we see it anyway?"

"Uh, sure..." At the same moment as Lancer picked up a small metal box from behind the desk and opened it, Danny's ghost sense went off. However, from the box, instead of Skulker or some other slightly scary ghost, a small green blur shoot out and zoom around the classroom, before quickly landing on Danny's desk and rubbing it's head against his chest.

It was Cujo.

Valerie looked like she was going to murder someone merely with the force of daggers coming from her eyes, while Cujo himself began to, quite happily, tuck himself under Danny's arm. The dog looked rather sleepy and content in the halfa's arms, and once he began to snore softly, many of the girl's hearts were putty in the puppy's paws.

"Aw, he's so cute!" Star cooed, bottom lip pouting out in a bad imitation of adorableness.

Sam, however, was worried - just as much as Tucker and Danny. How would the dog know Danny unless he was a ghost himself? And from the look on Lancer's face, it looked like that question would be arriving any second now.

However, as though realising the dilemma himself, Cujo quickly took off and was sucked back into the box by a rather annoyed Mr. Lancer. "Can we please get on with the class now?" the teacher-of-seemingly-everything asked.

Without waiting for an answer, he began to write on the whiteboard again. Everyone began to copy down what he wrote in their books, apart from Tucker, who looked rather like he was going to cry.

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><p>"Hey Mom! Hi Dad!" Danny called down the stairs into the basement. School had finished for the day and Danny had already sent the Box Ghost back into the Fenton Thermos for what seemed like the tenth time this week alone.<p>

"Hey Danny!" his mother called, hurrying up the stairs to give her son a fleeting hug. "I'm really sorry, honey, but I've got to go help your father again. We're building a new machine that, as well as capturing ghosts, sends them back to the Ghost Zone! ...and your father has got himself stuck in it."

Without waiting for a reply, Maddie Fenton hurried back down the stairs, shouting: "Don't wiggle it, Jack! It'll just make it worse!"

Danny walked up the several flights of stairs, reaching his room on the top floor not even out of breath. Fighting ghosts had helped him in some ways.

He opened his door, dropping his bag and falling onto his bed. If today had been bad, then he dreaded to even think about tomorrow.

As Danny sighed out, a large breath of cold air came out of his lungs along with it. He glanced down at it, standing up quickly and opening his window. Glancing around, he jumped out of the window, turning into Phantom mid-air and quickly flying off to where he could hear the most screaming.

Ember was stood on top of a huge portable stage, rocking out chords and heavy riffs and she sang along to her own songs. Dozens of people stood around, screaming her name as she sang, and all the while her hair grew longer and longer.

"This isn't good," Danny muttered to himself, turning invisible as to not scare too many people. He landed, and quickly turned back into Fenton, grabbing his cell phone from his pocket and calling Sam.

"Sam?" he asked the moment she picked up.

"Yes?" the goth replied.

"Ember, on Amber Avenue. She's too dangerous for me to fight by myself, I'll need help."

"Okay. Be there soon." Sam hung up and Danny stuffed his phone back into his pocket, happy to just wait until his friend arrived. However, Destiny was obviously in a bad mood that day as she made something very, very bad happen.

Lancer arrived.

Now, to you or I this wouldn't be a particularly bad thing, as everyone knows that teachers have friends outside of school as well as families and whatever. However, Lancer had been desperate to move away from his parents as they were the sort of slightly overbearing and sort of stalker-ish parents that tailed him wherever he went. So, instead of living in Canada, he had moved to the centre of the USA in a desperate attempt to lose them. This had worked, but the thing was, William Lancer's friends had all gone camping for the weekend, insane people that they were. Now, Lancer considered himself to be a very level-headed, intelligent sort of person, so his mind sort of worked like a dog's. Of course, this is being very simplistic.

But, rather literally, the only things that went through his head at this time were: _Is there anyone here I know quite well? No. Okay, then let's find the least hostile student in a radius of about three metres._

This student just so happened to be Danny.

"Hi, Mr. Fenton," Lancer said faux-casually, trying to radiate an air of casualness or some other mutated adjective.

Danny didn't even turn to his teacher, instead scanning the surrounding streets for any sign of his friends. "Hey, Mr. Lancer. What are you doing here?"

"Well, all these kids were _hangin'_' here, so I thought I ought to come join _y'all_ in whatever you're _groovin'_ to."

"Uh... sure, Mr. Lancer," Danny agreed admirably, noticing Sam and Tucker and starting to walk over to them.

"_Yo_, Mr. Fenton, where're you off to, _dude_?"

Danny blinked several times, trying to get the sound of Mr. Lancer acting 'hip' permanently erased from his brain. "I'm going to see Sam and Tucker." He gestured towards his two friends and began to hurry towards them, muttering 'excuse me' and 'pardon me' to everyone he bumped into on his trip to the other side of the crowd.

"Wait for me, _gnarly dude_!" Mr. Lancer called after him.

Instead of slowing down, however, Danny instead sped up, managing to get away from the overweight teacher and over to his friends. Sam began to speak, but Danny simply pointed up to the stage, where Ember's name was being chanted by hundreds, if not a thousand or so, people. Her hair was starting to dangle down her back, she was being that worshipped.

"We need to get rid of her," Sam said, glaring at the singer as though that would set her on fire from several hundred metres away.

"Agreed. But I don't think we'll be able to control the crowd if we do..." Tucker sighed. "I suppose we'll have to get something bigger to distract them."

"Like what? Danny Phantom turning into Danny Fenton?" Danny offered, sarcasm laced in every word.

"That'd wor-" Tucker began, but was quickly cut off by a double-strength glare, from both Danny and Sam.

"I don't think so," Sam snapped. "We don't want another repeat of when Danny was revealed and the Guys in White came, do we?"

Tucker sighed. "Okay, maybe not. But I've got no idea as to how we'll distract them."

Danny and Sam looked at each other and grinned.

"G-guys? Guys! I'm not singing again!" he moaned. "You told me I was awesome at the time, then the moment I stop, I watch as the whole town stops writhing in pain and starts to pummel me with fruit!" He clutched his PDA to his chest protectively. "HANNAH ALMOST DIDN'T SURVIVE!"

Sam sighed melodramatically. "Listen, Tuck, you're going to have to sing while Danny kicks Ember's butt. There's no way we can distract the crowd for long enough otherwise, because while they're chanting her name, they're under her control."

"Fine," Tucker muttered, shoving his PDA into his bag and taking that off his back. "But you owe me the latest _Doomed_ update, Sam. This is so unfair."

"Oh, it's unfair," Danny commented sarcastically, "at least, for all the eardrums you're going to make bleed."

Making a rather rude gesture at Danny, Tucker passed Sam his bag, then began to creep around the crowd, trying to get behind the stage as to manage to somehow steal Ember's spotlight.

Scrambling up the stairs, Tucker lunged past the bodyguards while Danny and Sam could only watch as they scrambled after him. He lunged for the mic, grabbing it out of Ember's unresisting hands, and began to sing into the mic.

The crowd stopped chanting. The speakers began to squeak in noise-stress.

Hurrying to the portable toilets, Danny hopped inside one, and changed into Danny Phantom. He flew out the roof of the porta-loos, and began to attack Ember.

"Hey, Ember!" he called. "Where's your wimpy boyfriend?"

Ember looked suitably offended and began to fly after the young half-ghost. "What're you talkin' 'bout, you freak?"

"I mean Skulker," Danny grinned, laughing as he flew backwards.

"I don't know what you mean!" a fierce blush had started to blossom over Ember's cheeks as the humans began to stare at the two arguing ghosts. "I'm not with him anymore!"

"Ri-ight," Danny agreed. "Because I totally didn't see him making out with Kitty last week."

"**WHAT?" **The blue haired ghost's hair was rapidly shrinking, going from long to short in seconds. "I'll find him and kick his butt into the Human world!"

And just as that statement was said, Sam finally got in with the Fenton Thermos and sucked Ember into the blew stream of light.

Danny and Sam hurried away, leaving Tucker alone on stage. The young African-American ran off stage, the only thing consoling him being the _Doomed_ update.


	3. The Problems Begin

**Hi guys! This is gonna be an extra update, because next chapter we should really start getting into the thick of things... :P **

**Thank you so, so, so, so, so much for all the reviews and favs and alerts! :D **

**Uh... I'll be updating again tomorrow. Better get writing, huh? xD**

**Oh. I was just wondering, would you like any pairings in this story? I was trying to stay away from pairings altogether, however if there is a general census saying that most people want the same paring, then that'd be good. :P Review telling me what you'd like, kay?**

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><p><span>Chapter 3<span>

"Good morning class!" Mr. Lancer said too enthusiastically the next morning. "Today we'll be starting our project on the differences between ghosts and humans!"

Sam's hand shot into the air.

"Yes, Miss Manson?"

"Sir, I was wondering if we should have another variable in our project. As you know, we'll need several different sets of data to work on to see a comparison."

"I understand what you're saying, Miss Mason, however are you implying that we find another ghost to test?"

Sam shook her head. She had obviously done her research on this and was trying to bail Danny out. "I mean, we should have different students."

Lancer's eyes lit up like he'd thought of the idea himself. "Excellent idea, Miss Manson! Since Mr. Fenton isn't here... _again_... we'll have to choose who else to test on ourselves."

"How about Dash?" Paulina giggled all too girlishly. "I mean, he's the opposite from Daniel, isn't he? Sporty, intelligent, handsome..."

Glancing at Tucker, Sam made a gagging motion. Tucker nodded enthusiastically along with this.

"That's a good idea, Miss Sanchez. And we should also have a girl along with the two boys, right?" Looking around the classroom, Lancer quickly picked out Star and told the two A-Lister's to stand up at the front of the classroom.

There was a frantic knock on the door, then it opened squeakily and Danny Fenton fell through the doorway, somehow managing to stagger upright again. "Sorry I'm late, Sir..." he panted, hands on his knees. A nasty bruise was blossoming on his cheek and there was an odd concoction of what was clearly blood and odd green goo dripping down from the nape of his neck. There was a rip in his t-shirt, where Danny's chest was clearly visible, and clearly dripping blood.

"_TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD! _What happened to you?" Mr. Lancer, Tucker, Sam, and a few other onlookers rushed over to the teen, inspecting the damage with their eyes.

Obviously not realising what he was saying, Danny somehow managed to pant out: "I met a ghost... Skulker... on the way to... school..."

"And why did you do this?" Lancer had gone from worried to suspicious of the reasoning in a second.

"Missed the bus..." Danny sat down on a chair Tucker had gotten for him, and quickly nodded, his face slowly turning from the brilliant ruby shade it had been to his normal, if slightly tanned, complexion.

Sam glanced at Danny worriedly. She hadn't thought to give Danny the Fenton Thermos back last night, so Danny had obviously had to fly away from the crazy ghost! She bit her lip, twisting her lips regretfully.

"How did you get to school, then?" someone asked.

Danny looked up at Lancer, eyes half-lidded. "I flew," he said shortly.

Then he smacked to the floor.

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><p>When Danny awoke, he was in the nurses office, the whole class crowded around him. Lancer was stood directly above him.<p>

Danny had the strangest feeling. It was like he had just been operated on, or like he had just been to the dentist.

"What happened?" he asked, sitting up. The whole class gaped at him as he stretched slightly and made to stand up.

"You fell unconscious," Sam told him. "There was ectoplasm blood mixed in with your blood, so you fainted."

"Oh." Danny sighed, not liking all the attention he was getting. "Um... how long was I out?"

"IT WAS AMAZING!" the nurse cried, bursting through the doors. Danny's parents were footsteps behind her. "We literally watched as his cuts healed and the skin knitted itself together again!"

Maddie looked slightly frazzled, while Jack looked proud. "They healed in minutes?" Maddie said weakly, collapsing into a chair.

"Yes! There was this sort of green goo that smothered the cuts and closed them!"

Danny glanced to Sam, then patted the bed. She sat next to him, and the class watched as they spoke to each other in lowered voices, Tucker joining them seconds after.

Dash was very, very annoyed. He was star quarterback, the most popular kid in school, and his limelight was being usurped by the stupid, nerdy Danny Fenton!

Dash left the room, his posse following close behind him. Daniel Fenton may have got the attention today, however it wouldn't last for long.

"So you managed to get away with it?" Sam asked Danny at their lunch table.

"How _did _you manage it?" Tucker joined in, his mouth full of chicken.

"I told them that the ectoplasm must have healed my wounds faster than average," Danny explained, head leaning on the table, "and that my ecto-gun was in my backpack, which had been taken away from me. That was good enough for them to smack my hand and send me back to school."

"I would have thought they wouldn't have sent you back to school, considering you lost a lot of blood," Sam said thoughtfully, picking at her food.

"Well, they were just superficial cuts," Danny said convincingly, his acting side coming out awe-inspiringly quickly. "They hurt a bit, but I'll be fine... Yes, I'll call you if I don't feel good, Mom..."

Sam let out a short bark of laughter. "Good actor, aren't you?" she commented.

"I have to be," Danny admitted shortly. "I don't want them to hurt Phantom, or me for that matter, so acting... I need to be good at."

Tucker ravaged the rest of his chicken before contributing again to the conversation. "What happened with Ember last night?"

Danny shrugged. "We took her back to my parents basement, and let her go through the portal. That's it."

"I forgot to give Danny back the thermos, and that's why he was beaten up by Skulker this morning," Sam admitted sheepishly. "Sorry."

"S'okay." Danny glanced up at his friends. "No, seriously, it's fine. The thing I'm more worried about is how ghosts are coming out of the portal more frequently. I mean, Johnny can't come through again without finding a natural portal, I know that, it's just Ember and Kitty are coming through more and more..." Danny trailed off uncertainly, placing his head back into his folded arms that were lying on the table.

Hiding a smirk, Tucker turned to Sam. "What do you think of this, Sam?" he asked. "Lots more _girls_ around _Danny_..."

"Oh, so funny," Sam commented sarcastically. "I'm awed. Amazed. Shocked. Such perception cannot be held by mere mortals, Tuck."

"Agreed," Danny contributed.

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Well, don't be happy, then. I would be if I were you."

"Oh, su-ure," Danny agreed. "Especially considering they're all ghosts. And they've all been dead for possibly hundreds of years. Oh, yes, that makes so much sense."

Tucker grinned. "Got a girl you like that's alive, then?" He was _totally_ going to use this as blackmail later in life.

"No." Danny replied.

Sam felt her dreams being crushed.

* * *

><p>Walking home, Sam decided that maybe, just a <em>little<em> maybe, that Danny liked her too... but was far too scared to admit it.

"I'm boredd," Tucker moaned. "Why aren't there any ghosts?"

"Personally, I'm glad there aren't any," Danny admitted. "My parents are probably following me twice as closely as before because of the ghost attack this morning.

_Meanwhile, three cars, two feet across, and up a tree, Jack and Maddie Fenton were watching Danny as he walked home with his friends. It was the tallest tree in the whole of Amity Park and had previously homed a tree house, but now that tree house was a "secret" lab. _

"_He's with Tucker and Sam," Jack hissed to his wife. "They'll be arriving at Base One colon Home any moment now."_

"D'you guys want to come in?" Danny asked. "My mom and dad aren't in, and we just bought a load of new stuff for ghost hunting... I can show you a couple of things."

"Sure," Tucker and Sam both agreed, entering the house.

"_Switching to camera four now," hissed Maddie. And... they're inside the house. Status report?"_

"_We have four heat signatures, correctly identified as Jazz, Danny, Tucker and Sam." Jack muttered. "And I think we should end it here. They're safely inside the house; we can monitor them ourselves."_

"_Understood. Over and out."_

"They're probably watching us, you know," Danny said conversationally a few minutes later.

"I know," Tucker replied. "Because your parents are like that."

"Tell me about it," Danny agreed.


	4. Pulse Rates and Heartbeats

**Hi people~**

**I've decided to stick with my original plan of no pairings. :P Thanks to an anonymous reviewer, who I have named "anonymous reviewer", (WHY DO YOU HAVE NO ACCOUNT BECAUSE I CANNOT REPLY D:) I was convinced to stick with the original plan because... well, there are more than enough Danny/Sam and Tucker/Jazz fanfictions out there and if you want a story with that, go and read that. xD Lawl.**  
><strong>Anyway, enjoy!<strong>

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><p>Chapter 4<p>

From the moment he woke up, Danny had a terrible sense of foreboding. His brain was telling him to go back to bed, curl up and just stay away from everyone today.

Danny ignored it.

He hurried downstairs, tripping over himself in the process and fell flat on his face. It was painful. Then he got breakfast, and spilt milk down his pyjamas. He then hurried back upstairs and stubbed his toe on a step. Danny quickly got dressed, brushed his teeth while smashing a mirror, then hopped out of his window as Danny Phantom and flew to school. Then, he turned back into Fenton and walked into school, glad for it to be Wednesday and praying that the day would be over with as his sense of foreboding, as usual, had been very, very correct.

And then Dash spotted him.

Stomping over to the half ghost, Dash felt an overwhelming need to punch the little squirt down into the ground. So he did so.

But what he didn't expect was for Danny to fight back. Well, it wasn't really called fighting. But there were sarcastic comments galore.

"Oi, Fen-turd. What are you doing?" he catcalled across the corridor, quickly making people jump out of the way for him and his posse. "Hoping that you'll die so you'll be more popular in the ghost zone?" That earned a laugh.

Danny sighed heavily. "Look, Dash. Please, I'm really not in the mood today." Was that a... fruit-loop in Danny's hair? "Can you just push me into a locker and get it over and done with?"

Dash was stunned. In his entire fourteen years of living, Danny Fenton had not once said something back to the famous-yet-infamous quarterback. "Okay, Fen-Retard. I hope you're ready for a beating like the one you had yesterday, because you're getting it!" He lifted his fist up and aimed it at the dark haired boy's face. He pushed it out, expecting a cry of pain and a crunch, but instead there was -

_Slap._

It was the most significant sound ever heard in the Casper High hallways. Because instead of taking the punch, like so many other days, Danny had in fact stopped it altogether. He had caught the punch.

"Look, Dash," Danny said pleasantly, "I'd really prefer it if you stopped beating me up very morning. It's not particularly enjoyable for me, and it'd be pretty nice if I didn't have bruises every single day when I get home from school."

"But you never have any bruises," Kwan contributed.

Danny grinned scarily and his eyes seemed to flash green. "Exactly."

Dash almost dropped him. "What are you saying, Fenton?"

"Well, let's just say that even after yesterday, I haven't any scabs on my face, have I?"

And with that revelation, Dash did drop Danny on the floor. The young half-ghost then hurried off to Science, praying that his morning couldn't get any worse.

* * *

><p>Ironically, it got worse. After chatting with Sam and Tucker for a bit, waiting for the bell to ring and then walking slowly to Science, Danny was pushed into the room by Mr. Lancer, who was waiting outside.<p>

When he entered the classroom, Danny was herded off to the front, where Star and Dash were both already waiting. Star was danging off Dash's arm like a sort of handbag, much to the annoyance of Paulina, who was glaring daggers at them both. Cujo was being released by one of the nerds and began to zoom around the classroom, yapping wildly. Danny's heart was pumping wildly; not in excitement, but in honest fear.

And just to top it off, Lancer ran into the room and started screaming at them all.

"_HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS_! EVERYONE APART FROM THE TEST SUBJECTS, SIT DOWN NOW!"

The whole class abruptly sat down, leaving Cujo to fly around Danny's head and then softly land in his hair.

Valarie was sending daggers to the puppy across the classroom. Danny shuddered; he was often on the receiving end of those hateful stares, but never as harmless, clumsy Danny Fenton before.  
>Lancer strode to the front of the classroom and began to glare down his students. "Well, class," he said immensely coldly "today we'll be getting the information we want from the test subjects. We'll be covering temperature, sporting ability and your reactions to the world around you."<p>

"What about blood?" someone chipped in.

"I thought it better not to do that considering that Mr. Fenton was injured a few days ago. It wouldn't do well for him to loose too much blood."

Danny's pulse slowed a little. Thank goodness for that - they wouldn't be testing his blood. He had ectoplasm mixed in with there.

"However," Lancer continued, "instead, we will be doing pulse rates. This means I have some stopwatches here for you guys to use for the pulse rate and for the sporting ability challenges.

"Oh," Lancer smirked a bit here. "And you're going to be doing these tests for the rest of the day, guys, so you're with me all day."

Danny's sense of foreboding had, yet again, been right.

* * *

><p>Sighing to himself as he counted his own pulse rate, Danny couldn't help but notice what had already been written up on the whiteboard. A table had been made, with four different names on it.<p>

Dash was written with love hearts and smiley faces surrounding it, while Paulina had kisses smothering it. Dog-ghost was written with a pair of ears coming out of the D, but Danny's name was simply written in black pen.

Danny watched as Tucker crept over to the board and wiped out the black words, replacing them with ones in bright green whiteboard pen. Tucker then doodled the Danny Phantom logo next to his name. Although Tucker was cutting it rather close, Danny, nonetheless, grinned to his friend, then scrawled down his pulse rate onto a provided piece of paper.

He then took it to the front of the room, for Lancer to look at and write up on the board. The teacher glanced at the paper, and was about to write it up on the board, when he did a double take.

"Are you messing around with me, Mr. Fenton?" the teacher enquired harshly.

Danny frowned. "Uh, I dunno what you're talking about, sir. I recorded my pulse rate, like you said..."

"You've obviously got it wrong," he snapped. "Thirty beats per minute is not normal for a person your age! Now do and do it again!"

Shrugging to a frowning Sam, Danny sat back down at his seat and set the time for a minute again. He placed his middle finger over his wrist and, yet again, began to count his pulse.

_One second..._

Dash was currently running across the classroom while all the popular girls over-swooned and generally acted like silly children.

_Fifteen seconds..._

Star, on the other hand, was being temperature tested by several of her girlfriends and a couple of desperate nerds. They kept fawning over the thermometer and make her do the test to gain an average result.

_Thirty seconds..._

Cujo was currently being held down by Kwan and Valarie for the pulse test, even though the small dog kept sending heartbreaking pleading eyes towards Danny. The small green ectoplasmic dog obviously wanted Danny to help him, but the halfa knew he couldn't.

_Forty-five seconds..._

Tucker came to sit down next to Danny. "What did Lancer say?"

Danny shrugged. "He told me to do it again since the results were invalid."

"Invalid?" Tucker questioned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I got thirty beats in a minute, and I have no idea if that was normal, so I told Lancer and he told me to go do it again."

Tucker's eyes widened. "You mean your pulse rate is thirty bpm?"

"Well, yeah," Danny shrugged. "I wouldn't exactly lie for the results, even though I'm half-ghost."

The timer went off and Danny scrawled down his results on a piece of paper.

"What did you get?" Tucker asked curiously. He knew that an average fourteen year old should be getting sixty to one-hundred beats per minute, and yet Danny had only gained thirty? It was obviously something to do with his ghostly side.

"Only twenty-eight beats this time," Danny shrugged, and watched as Valarie went up to Lancer with Cujo's results. "Anyway, I better go tell Lancer that I'm not lying." He stalked over to the main desk in the science lab, scowling heavily.

"So, the ghost dog didn't have a pulse rate at all?" Lancer was asking Valarie.

Valarie nodded, her long hair jumping as she did so. "Yeah, sir. We don't know why, but it seems to somehow have conscious thought without having any signs of actually being alive."

"I have my results, sir," Danny interrupted, passing the sheet to Lancer. "And I wasn't lying about it at all."

Lancer looked down at the sheet. 30 was written there, but crossed out. Below it, the number 28 was clearly visible.

"Since you're obviously so determined to lie and destroy our results, Mr. Fenton, I suppose I'll have to record your pulse rate!" Grabbing Danny's arm, the unimpressed teacher stalked over to the dark haired boy's desk. "Sit down," he snapped.

Danny sat down on the stool then stuck his wrist out for Lancer to measure. Sam and Tucker joined them, along with Cujo (who landed, once again, on Danny's head) and Valarie. The rest of the class stared as Lancer placed his fingers over Danny's wrist and then started the timer again.

One minute later, and Lancer looked suspiciously like he was going to faint. "Was that.. for real?"

"Well... yeah?" Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "I told you that I wasn't lying."


	5. Sporting Achievements

Chapter 5

After this revelation, the class fell into silence. Lancer limped over to the whiteboard, muttering under his breath. He slowly added '0' for Cujo's pulse rate, and '30' for Danny's. Dash's, meanwhile, was a healthy 70 and Star's was 65.

"So your pulse rate is 30 bpm?" Sam questioned Danny, who had quickly moved to the field, and was currently sat outside in the sun.

"Yeah," Danny replied drowsily. "I think it has something to do with the ghost part of me."

"Agreed," Tucker said. "Cujo doesn't have a pulse, so I think that Danny's pulse would probably be halved because he's half ghost and whatever."

"I think I'm more than half ghost," Danny admitted slightly sheepishly. "It feels like I'm more like 70 percent ghost and 30 percent human."

"That's freaky," Sam said in a monotone. "But cool, too!"

Danny laughed slightly and stretched. He noticed Lancer waving him over from the other side of the football field, so Danny sighed and stood up. "Lancer's calling; I better go."

"Good luck," Sam said shrewdly.

"You'll need it," Tucker agreed.

Nodding to his friends, Danny walked across the grassy field, quickly reaching Lancer, Dash, Star and Cujo.

"Listen up, pupils, and... uh, ghost." Lancer said in a 'clearly I am more important than you mere mortals' tone. "We'll be doing a race to see who is the fastest. Whoever wins, wins."

"Where will we be running from?" Star asked.

"Well, you better get into your gym clothes, as we'll be doing sprinting as well as a long distance course." Lancer grinned wolfishly, but still looked slightly shaken up as he glanced at Danny.

All three students grabbed their bags and headed off to the changing rooms to get changed. In the changing room, Danny yanked off his shirt, pulling on his plain white gym shirt, and changing from his customary blue jeans into black trousers. He yanked his sneakers back on, then headed out the door, not even noticing the shocked stare Dash was giving him.

Fenton - _Fen-turd_ - had no scars! Dash had been expecting a long, thin and slightly red line to run down from his right shoulder, maybe down to a little below his left lower ribs? It had certainly looked like Danny had been cut there yesterday, and Dash had been hoping to give the little oddball a couple of good punches there to make up for the sharp shock he had gained this morning.

But there had been nothing.

Sure, there had been a faint trail of scar tissue, but instead of it looking days old, it looked months, or even years old! And the weirdest thing was, it didn't even seem to give him pain. And, coupled with that, there had been the Danny Phantom logo doodled next to his name, things were starting to match up for Dash Baxter...

Just all incorrectly, of course.

* * *

><p>Danny headed out to where Lancer was standing, Cujo writhing in the pot-bellied teacher's arm. The moment the small dog noticed Danny he began to yap wildly, and looked as though he was going to turn into his much more fearsome and dangerous form.<p>

However, nothing happened.

Cujo somehow managed to escape Lancer's grasp, and the small dog flew slowly over to Danny, who let the puppy land in his arms.

"What's the matter?" Danny murmured to the green animal. "Why are you so upset?"

Cujo whimpered and shook his head quickly, exposing a thin, white and luminescent strip of what looked like fishing wire around his neck. Danny touched the wire, wincing as he remembered the pain of it in his phantomly form.

"Ouch," Danny grimaced. "That must really hurt. Poor you..." he patted the dog's matted fur, and Cujo whimpered a little. "Listen, I'll let you go the moment this is over, okay?" Danny sighed, but muttered to the dog. "Fine. Fine. Now, shoo." He pushed the little dog back into the air and it hovered back over to Lancer, who was staring at Danny in shock.

"You're not scared of it?" Lancer enquired.

"Uh, no-oo," Danny frowned. "I have to deal with ghosts all the time - parents, you know?"

Lancer slowly nodded, realising the authenticity of the tale, then waved Dash and Star back over to him. "Okay, people, we'll be doing the sprinting first. We have separate stopwatches going for all of you."

The two humans, one half ghost and one pure ghost all nodded or barked their understanding, and then Lancer told them to all line up. "Okay," he snapped. "Run from here to where Miss. Sanchez is waiting."

Paulina was stood on the other side of the field, waving frantically, her little possee of friends surrounding her.

"Three... two... one..." Lancer said, immensely slowly. "GO!"

Cujo shot across the field. Dash began to sprint as well, arms pumping with Star in a close third. Danny gently jogged, bored with how this was turning out. He arrived last.

Although he didn't look, or teach, anything like the scary gym teacher, Lancer could certainly shout like her. "OI, FENTON! THAT WASN'T RUNNING! WE'LL HAVE TO START AGAIN, BECAUSE OF YOU!"

Everyone sighed and glared at Danny, and began to hurry back to the starting line. Cujo, surprisingly, wanted to be helpful and decided to follow as well.

Danny sighed to himself. He didn't want to let off more than he already had about his ghostly alter-ego, however it seemed he would have to follow the rules this time at least so Lancer wouldn't scream at him any more.

"Because of Mr. Fenton's antics, we'll start again," Lancer snapped the moment they got back to the starting line. "Ready, Miss Sanchez?"

Paulina over-nodded her assent, and then Lancer started to count down again. "Okay. Three... two... one..." he paused for dramatic effect, before shouting "GO!"

Cujo shot across the field again, winning without even trying. However, rather lazily if truth be told, Danny came in second, with Dash in third and Star in forth.

Needless to say, yet again, the whole class was silent.

"How did you do that, Mr. Fenton?" Lancer managed to stutter out.

Danny coughed, hiding a poorly concealed laugh. "Well, I have had to run away from my parents gadgets before."

Dash gaped at Danny. "Fenton won! W-what! That's impossible!" he moaned. "I mean, I'm the star quarterback!"

Paulina and Star were both having a hard time dealing with it too. It was geeky, nerdy, awful-friend-choices Danny Fenton, who had just beaten Dash Baxter, rich, certain to be famous and totally gorgeous star-quarterback in a sprinting race?

"This can't be happening!" Paulina wailed. _Have I made the wrong friends, all this time? _Internal self-doubt was fighting with her over-sized ego. Deciding that the best course of action would be to stride up to Danny and try to twang his heartstrings, Paulina strode up to the dark haired boy, flicking her long hair.

Danny had collapsed in a heap next to his friends, not even sweating. The three geeky kids were already chatting about some lame video-game named _Doomed_ or something equally stupid.

"Oh Danny," Paulina purred. Danny was in right now, and whatever was in, she was totally for. "How did you run so fast?"

Without even looking at her, Danny turned to lie on his back and shrug. "I guess I have some unexplored sporting talent."

All three of the geeks burst into laughter at that.

Paulina strutted away angrily, ready to share her discovery to the rest of her best friends.

* * *

><p>"So then," Paulina almost shouted, "they all burst into laughter!"<p>

Star had her head leaning on one of her palms. "This is so mysterious..." she muttered. Her mother was very hippie-like, and Star had always been a firm believer in fate, physics and fortune-telling. "I mean, there's an aura around him that like, none of us can pierce... he, like, seems to _glow_..."

"What're you talking about?" Phoebe, a pretty but rather unthinking cried. "Everyone knows he's the geek-turned-bad-boy."

"Uh, what?" Star turned to her, hate evident in her glare. "Where did you read this garbage?"

"_Teen Vogue_," Phoebe snapped. "Where the best advice and fashion is, combined!"

"Girls, girls!" Paulina shouted. "Listen, we all _know_ he's like, cool all of a sudden, but the thing is we have to figure out why!"

"Agreed," a forth Asian girl, named Anyah agreed. "We all need to agree on this, girls, so we can find out the cause and try to stop the effect."

All four girls nodded, certain that they would somehow manage to rat out a certain baby-blue eyed male.


	6. Planning, then Failing

**Hey, guys. Just a note here.**

**I've got a poll in my profile. Answer it for me? :)**  
><strong>Also, I'm changing my name. :P From 'Sunset1989' to 'ProneTwoInsanity'. Kay? xD Thanks. :3<strong>

Chapter 6

Plan One

Plan One was executed later the same day - just as Danny arrived back in the corridors after the sprinting excercise. Paulina ambled up to Sam, Tucker and Danny and began to speak to Danny flirtatiously, battingher eyelids a lot.

"Danny," the part Hispanic girl had uttered, "I was wondering, would you mind helping me with my science? I didn't manage to note down the final results for the sprinting experiment - mind showing them to me?"

"Sure," Danny had turned to Paulina, smiling slightly. "Have you got a pen and paper?"

"Uh, no," Paulina had replied hesitantly. "Come with me to go grab some?"

"Oh," Danny faked looking crestfallen. "Well, if you're that desperate for the results, you may as well go and ask Mr. Lancer for them, Paulina. Have a good lunch!" And with that, all three 'geeks' had walked off, obviously in the direction of the lunch hall.

* * *

><p><span>Plan Two<span>

Plan Two had taken place in the lunch hall, and was taken on by Star. She knew that Tucker had once had a crush on her - whether that crush was still real or not, she didn't know - however, she was definitely determined to use this previously obtained knowledge to her advantage and gain as much information about Daniel Fenton as she could.

She strode up to the nerds' table, where they had finished their lunch and were speaking about ghosts or something, and she tapped Tucker on the shoulder rather flirtatiously. "Hi Tuck," she smiled brilliantly. "I was wondering if you'd like, help me with some research I have on ghosts."

Shrugging to his friends, Tucker nodded. "Uh, sure," he agreed. He stood up and began to walk out of the lunch hall, Star hurrying behind him.

"What do you need to know?" he asked pleasantly, sticking his bag into his locker.

"Well..." Star started softly, "I was, like, wondering about how Danny knew that dog ghost. It only seems to like him."

Cracking somewhat of a smile, Tucker nodded in agreement. "I get what you're saying, however Danny only knows the ghost because of his parents insane inventions."

Oh, yes. Star knew about those. The Fentons were considered the resident weirdos of Amity Park. The father of the family was a rather dangerous driver – how the rest of the family were still alive after Jack's parking "skills", no-one was sure of. Maddie was known to be beautiful, but totally dangerous and scary. She was worse than a mother lion, and would defend any of her cubs at any cost.

And then there was Jazz and Danny. Jazz was intelligent; everyone knew that; but no-one was sure where the intelligence ended and insanity began. But Danny... he was a normal kid, it seemed, but held a lot of secrets. Was he adopted and his parents experimented on him? No-one would ever put that past crazy Jack and Maddie Fenton.

"So you mean that his parents experiment on him?" Star pressed on, determined to get information where Paulina had gotten none.

Tucker looked at her, gauging if she was serious, and then he burst out laughing. "Experiments on their only son? Jack and Maddie Fenton? That's one of the funniest things I've heard!" he wheezed.

Sighing heavily, Star glared at him. "Can't you give me any clues to work this out?"

"Nope," Tucker laughed, tapping Paulina's Danny Phantom smothered locker as he passed it. "Have fun!" he called, and then headed back into the lunch hall.

Star had failed as well.

* * *

><p><span>Plan Three<span>

Anyah and Phoebe weren't blood related.

However, they had both moved from Los Angeles to Amity Park with their parents, brother and older sister. They looked completely different, and yet always looked out for each other. In short, they were adopted sisters.

They might have looked out for each other, however that didn't mean that they didn't compete just as much as two real sisters would have. In fact, they competed with each other a lot more than blood sisters for some unknown reason.

And that meant that, in their minds, one of them had to win this competition.

While in Los Angeles, Phoebe had been a goth. She hadn't acted like one; simply dressed like one because she liked the style. So in her mind, she knew she was going to win with somehow managing to get Sam to like her.

"Hey Sam," she had said casually in the girl's toilets. Sam had been applying heavy eye liner, and Phoebe knew that it was the perfect time to strike.

"Hi," Sam had replied, blinking heavily and trying to make her eyes look good. "You're Phoebe, right? You hang out with the self-centred jerks?"

"Uh, pretty much," Phoebe replied, rather offended that her friends had just been called self-centred and jerks all in the same sentence. "Anyway, I just moved here from L.A, and I decided to like, change my style when I arrived."

Sam looked at her in the mirror and raised a highly un-understanding eyebrow.

"Hey, I wanted a change!" Phoebe defended herself. "Anyway, I'm, like, selling off a bunch of new goth clothes, and I'm pretty sure they're your size, so would you like, like to come to mine and see them or something?"

Without even missing a heartbeat or even thinking about it, Sam shot out a short: "I'm fine, thanks."

Phoebe was the one to raise an eyebrow at her this time. "I have a bunch of clothes from boutiques and whatever."

Sam turned to Phoebe. "Listen, Colbie," she started.

"It's Phoebe!" Pheobe cried.

"Yeah, yeah, Colbie, whatever. I'm pretty sure that, if I wanted to, I could go and buy the whole store without even making a dent in my bank account. So thanks, but no thanks." Shoving her make up bag back into her spider backpack, Sam seemed to have to qualms with offending the very popular A-Lister girl.

"But you're not popular! How can you be rich?" Phoebe burst out before Sam left the bathroom.

"Well, duhh," Sam rolled her eyes. "I mean, I have two of the best guy friends I could wish for, and the only way I got them was because I didn't flaunt my wealth." And with the slam of a door, Sam left the girl's bathrooms.

* * *

><p><span>Plan Four<span>

After discovering that all three of her friend's plans had failed, Anyah decided that she would be the one to show all of the others how to blackmail someone. And hers would work because she had been planning for the longest.

She pleaded with Dash for a while, until the football player gave in and decided to go along with her evil, if slightly deranged, plot. And Kwan had then roped in a few other football players and they were all let into the idea again.

And by the end of the lunch break, everyone in the entire school (excluding three, of course) knew about the plot, and Paulina, Star and Phoebe were all fawning over it like it had been their idea in the first place.

"They're coming now," Anyah whispered to her co-conspirators as the three nerdy kids walked down the corridor after lunch, heading towards Mr. Lancer's Science classroom. "Let's go!"

With the soft pitter-pattering of feet, people got into their assigned positions and started talking loudly. Lancer entered the room, followed by the nerds.

As Lancer began preparing his notes, Dash stood up and started heading over to where Sam, Tucker and Danny were all sitting.

"So," Danny was saying, "I told her she has no chance with Skulker because of the problems with him being smaller than Cujo, and she told me that she owed me a debt and that any time I needed a wish, she'd be more than happy to give it to me."

Sam made a vomiting gesture with her fingers. "That's disgusting. Desiree said that to you?"

"No joke," Danny said darkly, his head hitting the table with a painful sounding thwack. "I hate her."

"Oi, Fenton!" Dash interrupted their conversation rudely. "What do you freaks think you're talking about? _World of Warcraft_?"

Danny didn't even rise to the bait. "Yes, we are, Dash. Now please, go away."

Dash glared down at the much smaller boy. "Okay, freak, but we've got something to tell you." He looked smug here. "We've worked out your secret."

Danny looked slightly shocked for a couple of seconds, but Sam contributed to the conversation. "Yes? Well, if you're so knowledgeable about it, then why don't you tell us about it?"

Dash had been instructed on what to say if this was given. "It's to do with ghosts."

"Oh, yes," Tucker agreed. "His parent's totally aren't ghost hunters. Yeah."

"Well, we're not sure on the finer details..." Dash admitted, "but we're getting there."

Danny grinned up at Dash. "Well, when you get there, give me a call."

* * *

><p>"Ugh! I hate him!" Anyah cried out in frustration while sitting on the sports field. The test-ees were currently having to do a long distance running course, leaving the remainder of the class to wait it out on the field. Danny was doing surprisingly well, coming in second place so far again.<p>

"I can't believe we didn't notice how cute he was before!" Paulina exclaimed, staring at the blue eyed boy as he ran. "I mean, look at him..."

Both Phoebe and Anyah turned to watch Danny as he ran. Okay, maybe he was pretty cute, but there were many things that made a boy desirable. Cuteness, social status, wealth, fame... a lot of different things were contributing factors.

"And he looks a lot like that ghost boy, Danny Phantom," Paulina continued.

The sisters turned and looked at him again. Yeah... with a little photo-shopping for his hair and eyes, and then a clothes change, he could easily pass as totally amazing Danny Phantom.

"Strange, how their names are similar," Anyah commented. "Phantom and Fenton."

"Agreed," Phoebe nodded.

Neither of them managed to work it out.

* * *

><p>Dash, meanwhile, was currently very, very annoyed.<p>

The ghost dog was winning the race, with Fenton in second. Surprising them all, Star was in third, and he was last! This was not going to be good for his popularity. He could already hear the jeering of his peers now.

However, the thing that was worrying him was Danny. For most of Dash's education, he had picked on wimpy little Fenton, the kid that never fought back and just took it. But recently, Danny had begun to fight back.

He had started to deflect kicks and punches, and make sarcastic comments in return for Dash's beatings up. And the bruises and cuts that used to be there daily didn't seem to last long, either.

But the thing that was worrying Dash the most was the fact that Fenton was beating him in a running race. The smaller boy had never really flourished in any subject, apart from maybe Physics, but now he was beating Dash Baxter, star quarterback, in running? If it was only Star, (who's mother, as well as being a hippie, was very sporty) had been beating him, then he might have been able to take it. But there was nerdy little Fen-turd, geeky little loner, beating him in a sports race.

Dash simply couldn't take it.


	7. Bitter Humour

Chapter 7

"Okay, class," Lancer said loudly. "Back inside. Let's cool down a bit and then we'll do the final test: temperature."

Trooping inside with Tucker and Sam, Danny collapsed onto a stool. His hair was sticking to his forehead in a disgusting way and he pushed it out of his eyes, still breathing heavily.

"Look at the way his hair flops into his eyes," Paulina said dreamily. She was sat on the other side of the classroom to Danny, however was still lovingly gazing in his eyes.

Phoebe was still checking out the dark haired boy. "I suppose he's pretty cute," she concurred. She watched as he yawned slightly and fell back into his chair. "Okay, very cute," she admitted.

"He has pretty eyes," Star commented. "He has, like, this aura..."

"You've told us already," snapped Anyah. She was currently going out with a boy from a few years above them, and she really didn't want to split up with him.

All three of the other girls turned to her. "SHHH!" they hissed.

* * *

><p>Ordered to stand at the front of the classroom, Danny stood up straight, but yawned. He hadn't exactly had a good night's sleep, and now after the running, he was feeling even more drowsy.<p>

"I've got three thermometers here for the students," Lancer explained, "since we already know that ghosts are a solid zero degrees Celsius." He passed the thermometers to Star, Dash and Danny and then instructed them to place the thermometers in the fold of their elbow. "You're going to have to keep them in their for the next half-hour and take it out every ten minutes to measure temperature changes.

"Now, I'll be sticking you into teams to measure it. Mr. Baxter, you can go with Mrs. Mason. Miss Gaea, you can work with Mr. Seville. And Mr. Fenton, you can work with Miss Sanchez."

Groaning as he glanced over at the over-hormonal looking girls, Danny sent a 'help me pleaaase!' look at Sam, who merely smirked in reply. He slumped, then walked slowly over to Paulina, who was fluttering her eyelashes and checking out her nails repeatedly.

"Hi," Danny sighed monotonously, sitting down slowly and sticking the thermometre into fold where his elbow was.

Paulina, Star and Phoebe all checked out the young boy repeatedly as he sat there. He kept looking around nervously, like a wild animal trapped in a cage, and kept sending evil glares up at Lancer, who seemed oblivious to it all.

"Hey Danny," Phoebe purred. "I hope you're glad to come over with us." She grinned, swiping her tongue over one of her canine teeth.

Danny shuddered as Paulina came to look at the thermometer. "Hey, your temperature is only fifteen degrees Celsius," she commented, plucking it out from his arm. "Stupid thing must be broken." she shook it a little, trying to get it to work.

"Hey, sir!" Phoebe called Mr. Lancer across the room. "Danny's thermometer is broken!"

"What do you mean?" Lancer stalked over to the three girls and boy and grabbed the thermometer, inspecting the temperature. "Stupid thing must be broken!" he exclaimed, shaking it himself.

He glanced at Danny, who was looking up at him worriedly. _Fenton is obviously hiding something if he keeps looking so apprehensive..._

"I'll get you a new thermometer!" Anyah said unhelpfully, standing up quickly and hopping over to Mr. Lancer's desk. She grabbed a thermometre and stuck it in the crook of Danny's arm.

The girls and the teacher all watched it expectantly.

Danny felt slightly like head-desking.

* * *

><p>"Why are all these thermometers broken?" Lancer exclaimed, throwing the third thermometer onto the floor. "Miss Sanchez, go and collect Mr. Baxter's thermometer and we'll use his."<p>

Paulina rushed off and came back seconds later, Dash's thermometer in hand. "This one works, sir," she stated. "It says that Dash's temperature was 36 degrees Celcius."

Danny was starting to get extremely nervous. He had realised that his temperature had adjusted from when he had been 100 percent human, however this was just taking it out of normality and into some sort of extreme and horrible dream. He knew that if the class got whiff of anything else, they might have a chance of piecing it all together.

"You're so cold..." Star commented. Her temperature had already been measured and she had come over to join the rest of the class.

Anyah and Phoebe both touched Danny's arm. Yes, he was cold. Amazingly so.

"You're like ice..." Anyah murmured, her eyes going wide. "And you have a really, really, really low pulse rate..."

Looking at each other, Star, Anyah, Phoebe and Paulina all gasped, coming to the same conclusion at the same time.

* * *

><p>Swinging his bag behind his back, Danny walked home with Sam and Tucker. Clouds were beginning to come over the horizon from the east, but Danny shook it off as some bad warning and instead decided to enjoy his time with his friends.<p>

"So, how did it go with Lancer and the thermometers?" Tucker asked, once again on the internet on his PDA.

Danny shrugged, twisting his lips slightly. "Lancer said that the whole box of them must have been faulty and he was going to send them back and ask for a refund."

"So you managed to get away with that?" Sam pressed.

"Yeah, somehow," Danny muttered, rubbing an eye with the palm of his hand. "At least for tomorrow I'll be back to nerdy Fenton and people will have forgotten about me."

Sam laughed slightly. "Well," she said, "I wouldn't try staying with that idea. As I left the room I heard Paulina and her friends talking about vampires."

Danny made a disgruntled noise. "I hate my life."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Danny, think of all the poor, starving people out in Africa? They have almost no food or water and yet you're happy to say you hate your life?"

"I get what you're saying, Sam," he moaned, "but I get enough attention as being Danny Phantom. I don't want it while being Fenton as well."

"It'll die down," Tucker interjected. "With you it usually does."

* * *

><p>While Danny, Sam and Tucker had been slowly walking home from school, Phoebe, Star, Anyah and Paulina had all been riding home in Paulina's father's car. Paulina's dad, named Joseph Sanchez, couldn't help but listen into the girl's rather intense conversation.<p>

"When I touched his arm, he was so cold!" Phoebe said loudly. "I mean, we all knew he was gorgeous already, but now..."

"I think he's a vampire," Anyah muttered, boyfriend long forgotten. "Like the ones out of _Twilight!_"

There was silence in the back of the four by four, then all four of the girls burst out squealing. They loved vampires, and in their eyes, Danny hit all the criteria for being one of the supernatural creatures.

After a bit more squealing, the girls then fell into picking who they thought were were Danny's loyal vampire friends.

"I mean, it _must_ be Dash!" Paulina said quickly. "Dash just does it to make sure

It wasn't until Danny Phantom flew through the car that they even added ghosts to the mix.

Walker was hovering in the air, brandishing what looked like a handcuff gun. Danny, meanwhile, kept dodging and missing the flying handcuffs, obviously trying to escape Walker's grasp.

"I'll have you in for ten-thousand years!" Walker growled. "Multiple offenses of attacking members of the public, dangerous weapon use, cohering with the Master of Time, having possession of real-world items in the ghost zone, escaping from prison..." the list droned on for a while.

Bringing what looked like a Thermos out from a bag lying on the ground, Phantom landed on the tarmac road before opening it with a _click_ and letting the brilliant white light engulf the white-suited ghost.

"Enjoy your time, in-mate," Danny muttered to himself, then laughed loudly. He shot off into the dusk air, soon disappearing from sight altogether.


	8. Worse Day Ever

Chapter 8

The next morning at school was, quite plausibly, one of the worst Danny would have to experience in his life. There was no tripping over and hurting himself this morning, or anything vaguely similar to how his Wednesday morning had begun. In fact, Danny had high hopes for Thursday.

Getting out of the front door with more than enough time to spare, Danny walked to school, Tucker and Sam joining him at their usual stops. They chatted about Phantom for a while, before arriving at school with half an hour to spare.

And then they walked into the corridor.

Everyone in the corridor fell deathly silent, like they were at a funeral or some other morbid affair. And every single person turned to face Danny. Tucker swore he heard necks creaking as they turned.

There was utter silence.

"This isn't good, is it?" Danny muttered to Sam.

"Nope," she replied.

"But what have I done?" Danny asked her.

"No idea," Tucker responded.

Tentatively taking a step forwards, Danny was relieved to find that nobody started running towards him while screaming "GHOST!". Instead, whispers began to come from what seemed like every single corner.

Danny took another step.

Nothing dangerous happened. The whispers just grew louder.

Realising that the whispers were the only thing that would happen to him (and possibly bring his social status down; however, that pretty much wasn't possible) Danny, Sam and Tucker quickly traversed the hallway, reaching their lockers quickly.

Danny quickly put in his locker code, and opened the locker door. However, as he did so, dozens of slips of paper, envelopes and cards fell out of it and slid across the floor.

Every single one of them was addressed to Danny.

"How did they get in there?" Sam asked, rather stupidly.

"There's a vent on the door of my locker," Danny murmured. "They must have put all of these through there."

Picking up the closest letter to him, Danny ripped open the envelope and read what was inside. With his forefinger and thumb he pulled a pink card out and winced as he read the front.

**BEE MINE**, it read in bold script, with a cartoon pink bee sat on the front. Danny opened it tentatively and read what was inside.

After a few seconds, he dropped the card altogether, to the general amusement of onlookers. "I hate my life," he muttered, slamming the locker closed and stalking away.

Neither Tucker or Sam followed him, instead deciding to read the card out loud for amusement.

"Hello darling," Tucker read out (he lost the game of rock-paper-scissors and was forced to read it). "I hope that your affections follow mine in every way possible, and I just want you to know, that if you need any blood, I'm more than happy to give it. Paulina."

"What the heck is _that_ about?" Sam asked.

"They think he's a vampire," Tucker wheezed in between laughs.

Sam looked mortally wounded. "But that's goth!"

"Not any more, it isn't," Tucker smirked. "And anyway, it seems like these girls think that vampires are real, too."

Sam sent him a dark but sarcastic look. "I hate you." She walked off, leaving Tucker alone and laughing.

* * *

><p>Danny got into class late, his hair even more ruffled than usual. His skin looked pale and he refused to meet anyone's eyes. To be honest, he had just released Cujo, and the small dog had been quite happy to chase him for a number of minutes, leaving the young half ghost begging for forgiveness and also regretting ever letting the ghost go.<p>

"Sit down, Mr. Fenton," Lancer snapped to him. "You'll be glad to know that we'll be comparing evidence today of our results yesterday, so you'll be working in groups of about seven, with one test-ee per group."

Paulina's hand shot into the air and her eyes whipped around to face Danny. "Sir, can we pick our groups?"

"Yes, as long as you have a more or less equal amount of boys to girls," Lancer said pleasantly. "Anyway, get going!"

* * *

><p>Placed in a group with Kwan, Tucker, Valarie, Paulina, Anyah and Phoebe, Danny had officially decided that if his week continued like this, he would actually not come to school. Ever again.<p>

Paulina, Anyah and Phoebe were all staring lovingly at him from the other side of the table, while Kwan sat next to them, folding his arms angrily. Valarie and Tucker seemed to be the only ones able to function properly around Danny, although Valarie did keep stealing confused glances between them all.

Lancer had written up the results on the whiteboard, and had told the confused class to copy down the table before writing a conclusion and a follow up to show other experiments that could be done from the results gathered.

Scrawling down his work into his book, Danny fled to the front of the classroom where Lancer was marking work. Paulina watched him go, sighing dreamily.

"He's so amazing..." Paulina sighed.

"I know!" Anyah agreed.

"Obsessed much?" Tucker asked them.

Valarie really didn't get the big deal with her ex-boyfriend. Yes, he was cute - even she knew that - and he wasn't a total jerk like all the other males she knew. She just didn't understand why half of the school's population (all female, obviously) had only just realised this.

"What's up with the fan-girls?" Valarie asked Tucker curiously.

Tucker shrugged sheepishly. "Haven't the slightest idea. Something to do with vampires, I think."

Phoebe sighed heavily. "Why won't he answer any of our letters, though?" she almost wailed.

"Well, he's obviously having to fight rogue vampires all the time," Anyah said, quite happy to go to Danny's defence. "_That's_ why he's always late to school and almost every lesson."

None of the girls realised how flawed their logic really was.

* * *

><p>After calling the class to attention, Lancer decided to ask the kids as to how much attention they really put into their science work. "Well, class, what have you realised from doing this experiment."<p>

A hand shot up. "Yes, Miss Blackthorn?" Lancer asked.

"Well," the girl started, "I believe that the results are different from many different contributing factors. For example, Dash has quite a heavy body type, but is rather lean, leading me to believe that his pulse rate would be slower than a person who may not be as fit as him."

"Thank you." Lancer smiled radiantly. "Now, anyone else?"

This time it was Sam's hand. "Miss Mason?"

"However, we had a wild card mixed into our information: Danny. His results didn't seem to match his body type, nor the body type of any person his age. Why we got this information, we don't know."

Danny glared at her. _Thanks for adding fuel to this already blazing inferno, Sam,_ his glare seemed to convey.

Sam grinned in reply, then nodded cheekily.

Danny almost head-desked again.

"Excellent, Miss Manson," Lancer replied. "But there was another odd co-incidence with your data and the data for an average 14 year old. What was it, Mr. Fenton?"

"My data was halfway between the Cujo... uh, the ghost dog's data and the average person's data," Danny replied miserably. "I have no idea why this is, or how it happened, but something it has."

"Thank you, Mr. Fenton," Lancer said smugly. "And personally, I intend on finding _out _why this is happening."

Danny's ghost sense went off, so asking to go to the bathroom, he rushed outside and turned into Danny Phantom.

And then, without a warning, the outside wall of the classroom crashed in.


	9. Plasmius Arrives

**Sorry for the really short chapter. xD The next one more than makes up for it. :)  
>Anyway, this is the second to last chapter. So enjoyy! <strong>

* * *

><p><span>Chapter 9<span>

Bits of plaster and brick collapsed inwards. It smashed onto the tables and desks and chairs, collapsing many and also making a fair number of students scream in fear. Along into the classroom with the wall, was Plasmius.

Quickly going intangible, Danny zoomed through the wall, earning himself gasps of surprise and more sighs than he had earned while being Fenton, which was saying something.

Plasmuis cackled scarily. "Good morning, Daniel," he said rather affectionately.

"Don't you dare attack these kids," Danny said in a dangerous tone of voice.

"Oh, don't worry about that, Daniel," Vlad, or Plasmius, replied fondly. "I don't intend to have anything to do with these pure blooded humans, if you know what I mean."

Danny ground his teeth together, wishing he could ecto-blast Vlad without hurting anyone else in the process.

"But then, Daniel, you're not exactly a pure blooded ghost, are you?" Vlad sneered. "We're similar, in more ways than one. And believe me when I say that you are going to regret all of these people even _knowing_ you."

"We'll take this away from here," Danny snapped, flying over his classmates and shoving most of the rubble outside and allowing it to fall harmlessly for a couple of storeys , before landing with a _flump _on the school field. "I'm not letting anyone get hurt on my behalf."

"Oh, how _noble_," Vlad said slowly, sarcasm etching into every syllable of his voice. "And yes, I do agree, let's take this away from the little kiddies who keep getting so close to finding out your secret, but then lose it at the last second." Vlad grinned for a second, watching the student's faces as they morphed from mild shock into pure surprise. "I mean, _vampires_... how **pathetic**."

Eyes slightly too wide and mouth opened, Danny managed to stutter out a "How did you know that?" over the pumping of his heart.

Vlad simply smiled creepily in response.

* * *

><p>The moment the wall had fallen inwards, Lancer had dived under his desk and hidden, determined to stay out of the fight. Thankfully, Phantom had turned up and was currently dealing with the problem, however William Lancer could not understand what they were talking about. Vampires? Pure-bloods? This sounded like <em>Harry Potter<em> or something.

However, he had realised how convenient it was for Danny Fenton to run off to the bathroom, and then for Danny Phantom to appear. _Maybe the boy is being overshadowed by Phantom's... well, spirit? _Lancer thought, but then was quickly silenced by the way the two ghosts flew away from the classroom and headed out towards the school field.

Slowly standing up and trying not to whack his head on the underside of the table, Lancer couldn't even try to speak as his students fled the classroom to try and watch the battle out on the football field.

Original thoughts forgotten, for the moment, Lancer headed out after his students, determined to make sure that none of them got hurt.

* * *

><p>"Well, Daniel," Vlad said loudly out on the football field, "I have something of a gift for you." He smirked.`<p>

"I have one for you," Danny replied. "THIS!" From his hands shot out ice, which almost engulfed the much larger half-ghost, however Vlad dodged it at the last second, letting it land on the football field.

"Wow," Danny said conversationally, "they'll really need to clean that up..."

Vlad laughed slightly. "Well, my gift is much better than yours was. Mine is... this!" From someplace I don't even want to think about, Vlad brought out what looked like one of the Fenton's ghost blasting gun, however this one seemed to be about six times more powerful and made Danny shudder at the very thought of the idea it could inflict.

And then, things just had to get worse.

Because Maddie and Jack arrived.

Zooming across in the Fenton RV, Jack gasped as he saw Plasmius brandishing a souped-up version of _his_ gun at _his_ worst enemy: Phantom. Needless to say, Jack was not best impressed.

"Maddie, look! He's got a messed up version of the Fenton Ghost and Ghoul Blaster! That can't be good."

"No, dear," Maddie agreed. "Now, are we going to go out there and kick some ghost butt?"

Jack nodded enthusiastically. "YOU BET, MADDIE!" he grinned.

Noticing this from high above his parent's RV, Danny groaned. "Just when this day can't get any better. Look, can't we do this some other time?"

Vlad regarded him cooly. "You may be stuck for time, however I have all the time in the world... but my watch says we ought to do this now!" Vlad quickly pressed a large, red, and dangerous looking button on the front of the blaster, then, using an eyepiece, targeted Danny's ecto-signature. The machine began to power up, and then with a _**BOOM**_ that sent Vlad back several hundred meters, a large green blast was sent from the end of the gun.

It hit Danny in the chest.

He went hurtling to the ground.


	10. THE END

Chapter 10

Danny falls into the blackness.

It seems to be smothering him, not allowing him to move, or to breathe, or even to merely think. He can't even remember who he is.

Who is he? Where is he from?

Vague images float across his mind, not giving him any idea of who or what or how.

Faces...

A round faced girl, with pretty eyes and bright orange hair. She is smiling and talking, although it seems that all of his memories are on mute and he can't hear what she sounded like. Maybe he couldn't hear? But hearing - what was that?

Another girl. Dark hair, green clip... he thinks. Pale skin. The word _goth_ wells up in his mind, but he can't seem to recall what that is or how it got there or even how it was made in the first place. Spiderwebs and dark corners also come to mind. But it quickly fades from sigh and another floats in.

A darker skinned boy, this time. He wears a red hat in all of his memories, and seems to have more technological items than he could even remember seeing in his life. Meat and talking and laughing and hi-fiving (whatever that is) with this boy wells up in his mind, however it's as if he can only see the parts of the memory that contains the boy. He doesn't appear.

Two people come up. A huge, tall, round man and a short, thin, spindly looking woman. They do everything together, and two emotions flicker in, as fast as lighting, but disappear just as rapidly. Annoyance and love.

He wants to wait with these memories; see where they take him, however this quickly fades back into black...

Suddenly, it's like the whole world is talking in his ears. People's voice mingle with each other and the voices all seem young, apart from one, that seems to be older than the rest.

"I hope Danny's okay," an accented voice says. Paulina, his subconscious tells him, however he doesn't remember anything about this. Paulina. What a strange thing.

"I know," a softer voice agrees.

"Me, too," a similar voice says in yet another agreement.

"His aura is growing stronger... brighter..." a voice that sounds like a Star says. "I can feel it so much now."

There is some talking about hope and betterment and a person and stuff, and then the people leave. Only two remain.

"You have to come back to us, dude," a voice says. His mind registers it as Tucker. Loyal, friend, Tucker, who never left him (apart from that one time, but he's willing to let that slide).

"Yeah... we can't be without you." Warmth enfolds his right hand, it seems, and he suddenly feels like he can move it again. He squeezes the warmth, and the person gasps. "Tuck! Danny... he squeezed my palm!"

This is Sam, it seems. _Goth. Spiderwebs._

They talk to him, their voices becoming more and more frantic, until they too, leave, seemingly disappointed for some strange reason.

He fades back to blackness.

This time, there are no memories. He can hear still, though, but not well. There is a strange beeping noise. People come and go. Things go into his newly regained hand. Things come out. It seems to last then suddenly, he finds he can breathe again.

He takes in lungfuls of oxygen, feeling it pump round his body, making the blackness fade and fade. The people that visited - their voices echo around his head, making him have more and more of himself and less and less of the darkness that seems to cover every tiny piece of him.

When he fades to blackness this time, he can hear people laughing and talking, smiles in their voice. Why are they happy?

He sleeps, now.

* * *

><p>"Danny, we need you back, son," a gruff voice says. "We are <em>so, so<em> sorry about what we did to you.. but..." there is a lot of sniffing and the person starts to cry.

"We need you back, honey," another voice says, clogged up with emotion.

"You did good, brother, you did good," the final voice says, a lot more quietly than any others he's had, but just as powerful.

His body suddenly becomes his own again.

His mind tells him who he is again.

He is Danny Fenton. Fourteen year old human, who fails his grades and doesn't really do well at school. He is Danny Phantom, half ghost, who seems to be free but is really tied down to things he can't let go. Overall, he is _Danny_, a boy that isn't human, isn't ghost, but is simply **him**. He is tied down to tightly to both worlds that he cannot let either of them go for risk of the other collapsing on him. He is Danny, with a dark enemy that seems to constantly be on the edge of falling onto him and changing him, called Dan, and he refuses to let himself turn into him; with his brilliant, _brilliant, __**brilliant**_ friends Tucker and Sam, who made sure he would never have to endure any of it alone; with his parents, who mean well, but shoot at him as Danny Phantom and swear to rip him apart molecule by molecule; and finally, with his amazing powers that he can't master, but can also be a normal boy any time he wants.

For the first time in two weeks, Danny's eyes flicker open.

* * *

><p>It isn't long before people are flooding into his hospital room, desperate to see Danny Fenton awake again and looking as good as before he was blasted. There are so many of them, and all of them want hugs, or to talk, or to hold his hand and laugh and cry.<p>

Honestly, all Danny wants to do, is go back to sleep.

But he holds up for a while, until people flood back out of the room, leaving him and his teacher, Mr. Lancer alone for a while.

"So, Danny," the teacher said, humour obvious in his tone, "you were worried because you thought your secret was going to be revealed."

"Well, yeah," Danny sighed. "I mean, I've kept it for ten months, now; I don't think it would be much fun if it was going to be revealed."

There was silence between the two for a few seconds.

"W-a-a-i-i-t..." Danny said slowly. "You know my secret?"

"About the one with you being Danny Phantom and everything? Yeah. We got that a couple of seconds after Plasmius hit you with the ecto-gun."

Danny thought this over. "Okay, how many people know this?"

Lancer shrugged. "About the whole town?"

Danny did a bit more thinking. "This sucks," he stated bluntly.

Lancer laughed for a bit. "While you're at it, any more secrets you'd like to divulge about your Phantomly side?"

"Yeah," Danny said. "Vlad Masters is Plasmius."

Needless to say, the conversation got a little awkward after that.

* * *

><p>Jack and Maddie visited every day, bringing with them friends and family and anyone that wanted to see him. However, life quickly got in the way, and Danny was told to 'stay in bed while we deal with Vlad'. There'd be a dangerous glint in Maddie's eye as she said this, and Danny couldn't help but laugh at her tone.<p>

But now, Danny slumped back in his bed slightly. He had been in the bed for days now, and he was feeling fine, however his parents insisted that he stay in there.

Danny was immensely bored. In fact, he was so bored, that he had already started to flick an IV stand across the room using his ecto-blasts. Yes. Boredom creates desperation in a lot of people.

He had many people come to visit him, including the press, some random people he had seen but never spoken to before, and he had even been spoken to the director of a talk show. Obviously, he had said no, however Jazz had told him later on that his mother had told them 'a definite maybe'. Danny had shrugged it off; ever since he had been hit with the souped up blaster, he had found himself a lot calmer with things.

Nonetheless, the one person he had never, ever expecting to come and visit him was Dash.

On his second week of solitary and utterly boring confinement, Dash Baxter, star quarterback, came to visit Danny. He had been recovering as well, because according to what Sam and Tucker had told him, after seeing Phantom turn into Fenton, Dash had fainted in shock and gained a rather attractive egg on the back of his head.

Anyway, I digress. Let's get on with the tale.

There was a sharp rap at the door and Danny quickly tugged the unused drip back to his bed before shouting "come in!".

The door opened slowly, and Dash, looking as solemn as Danny had ever seen, walked into the room.

"Uh, hey," Danny said awkwardly. Yes; Dash was more than certainly an unexpected visitor.

"Hi, Danny," Dash said quietly. "I'll understand if you don't want to, like, talk to me or whatever, but please, can you hear me out?"

"Sure, Dash," Danny said politely. "Sit down."

Doing as he was bid, Dash collapsed into the hard hospital chair next to Danny's bed. He looked at Danny for a couple of moments, then looked into his lap and started to speak.

"Uh... Danny," he said. "I really don't know how to phrase this any better, but uh... I'm really sorry for what I did to you every day at school..." he paused, and allowed himself a glance up at Danny's expression. It was clear and smooth, not revealing anything.

"Well... I guess I didn't understand that you were going through as much of a hard time as me, if not worse." He laughed bitterly. "Believe me, I didn't do this just for you. Nathan, this little kid I used to pick on... well, he cried in front of me and begged me to stop. He was also being hit by his dad, and I didn't realise..." Dash trailed off awkwardly, still staring into his lap.

"Listen, Dash," Danny said, killing the growing stretch of silence. "What was the matter with your life to make you hit me?"

Dash stared up into Danny's face. "Well, I had so much pressure put on me," Dash admitted unthinkingly. "My parents wanted me to get good grades, get a girlfriend, be the star quarterback, get college applications early, go to a sports academy... You have no idea how hard that is while you're having to also balance what your friends and schoolmates and teachers think of you..."

Danny regarded Dash for a few more seconds, then opened his mouth to speak. "Listen, Dash, I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you - not properly. Eleven years of being in school and being bullied every day by a guy that thinks he has it hard because he has to do what _everyone else_ in school is doing... well, you wouldn't be able to forgive a dude like that. I know you couldn't."

Dash just stared. "But... you were Fenton, who didn't have a social status at all..."

Danny laughed. "Of course I had to do all of that. You think my parents didn't want me to grow up and be a good little ghost hunter? You think I didn't have to make sure that people didn't hate me, while fighting ghosts, maintaining a good grade and having to worry if a ghost is going to burst through the wall and beat me up any second of the entire day? And there was the pressure from my sister about me doing well at school, and having to read books, and having to sort out my parent's insane inventions..." Danny trailed off and looked at Dash, this time in the eyes. "But you know what, Dash? Turning into Danny Phantom was the best thing that ever happened to me. And it wasn't because of the powers. Think about that one, Dash, and if you understand, then maybe I could try to be somewhat of a friend to you."

Dash left in silence.

* * *

><p>The day that Danny went back to school was odd in many, many different ways. For example, he flew invisibly to school, and instead of somehow landing in a cubical, he instead landed right in the middle of the corridor. People stared and gaped at him, even after he had turned back into Fenton, but he walked away from them quite happily. He had found that things like that didn't effect him so much anymore.<p>

When he got into lesson (English, with Lancer) he found that when, halfway through the lesson, when his ghost sense went off, he stuck his hand up quickly and found that Lancer simply told him to 'kick some ghost butt'.

It was all rather surreal, actually.

In fact, when the ghost turned out to be the Box Ghost and he had been haunting some discarded boxes in the lunch hall, when people poured out of their classes for lunch, they stared as Danny, rather casually, sucked up the ghost into a thermos and flew back down the hall, whistling to himself.

However, there were three things that were right up there at the top on the odd ghost scale. Number one was Dash.

Dash had been avoiding him ever since the hospital incident, however when the football star came over to Danny and publicly asked for his forgiveness, Danny said yes. And, later in life, the two would never be close friends, however it would never be as bad as it had been before.

Number two was the fact he now had a posse of fan-girls **wherever he went. **Paulina, Phoebe, Star and Anyah had been tailing the half ghost for days since his release from hospital, and had started a Danny Phantom fan-club online, which was apparently tolling up millions of hits per day and was one of the number one hits on Google. Sam had told Danny that the website contained lots of pink love hearts and adoring love letters. Danny swore he would never log onto it.

But the final strange thing was his parents. Danny's parents hadn't taken the news very well; in fact, they had been convinced that their son had been overshadowed by Phantom. However, with a little blackmail from Jazz and some gentle reminding from Sam and Tucker, his parents had quickly come over to the idea, however decided that they would never, ever purposefully create another hybrid. And once Danny told them about what Vlad had done... well, let's say that a new mayor had to be appointed and Vlad was never, ever invited to a family dinner ever again.

Things had changed for Danny Fenton. However, there had been one main reason behind it: a test, checking how ghost-like you were. Oh, how life loves irony.

* * *

><p><strong>AND WOOT FOR TOTALLY CLICHÉ ENDINGS LOL.<strong>

**Now, it's time for the cheesy thank you's, and time for me to hop off and go make myself a cheese toastie. **

**Anyway, I'd just like to thank my brilliant new beta, Iymea, and my friend Cleo who helped me out in the starting chapters. :D**

**I can't seem to get anywhere on the Detention Club, however I have thought about a new story, where Danny's, like, two sides collide... :D It's a pretty good idea, if you ask me.**

**Anyway, if you didn't enjoy it, then sorry you read it. **

**But to everyone who reviewed, thank you! The list is muy long, lol. xD**

**Thank you to:**

**JuneLuxray2, Garnet Sky, geek179, Frostphantom , daniphantom149 , D for Danielle , Codiak , Phantomgirl96 , Iymea , ImNoHeroImTheVillian , KarinKurosakiHitsugaya913 , Macomister , PaRaM0rE-0394 , Sin - NaMe , magic stell , ColorLikeWhoa , Lord Jace , Winged Golden Tiger , nivogirl , Alexandria Paige , Biisaiyowaq , Weird little street rat , Vaneskera, Hellbreaker , LoneMoon , Xeiden , Call me Mad, gothsamphan14 , joy2theworlddannyphantom , Kiomori , ThePurpleSuperCow and anyone else who reviewed anonymously! You're all awesome~~**


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